Small-scale solar’s big potential goes untapped

Published: Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013 9:20 a.m. CDT

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(Photo Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/MCT)

Gerald Freeman is reflected in the panels of a small solar plant he build to provide about 80 percent of the power required by the the town he owns, former ghost town Nipton, California. The future of solar may not be in giant plants built in the desert, but small collection sites to power individual homes or small communities.

By Julie Cart — Los Angeles Times

(MCT) — NIPTON, Calif. — Gerald Freeman unlocks the gate to the small power plant and goes inside. Three rows of solar collectors, elevated on troughs that track the sun’s arc like sunflowers, afford a glimpse of California’s possible energy future.

This facility and a smaller version across the road produce some 70 kilowatts of electricity, about 80 percent of the power required by Nipton’s 60 residents, its general store and motel.

Freeman, a Caltech-trained geologist and onetime gold mine owner, understood when he bought this former ghost town near the Nevada border that being off the grid didn’t have to mean going without power.

He contracted with a Bay Area company to install solar arrays on two plots of land. The town has a 20-year agreement to buy its power at a below-market rate.

Projects like these make do with scant financing opportunities and little support from the federal government.

The Obama administration’s solar-power initiative has fast-tracked large-scale plants, fueled by low-interest, government-guaranteed loans that cover up to 80 percent of construction costs. In all, the federal government has paid out more than $16 billion for renewable-energy projects.

Those large-scale projects are financially efficient for developers, but their size creates transmission inefficiencies and higher costs for ratepayers.

Smaller alternatives, from rooftop solar to small- and medium-sized plants, can do the opposite.

Collectively, modest-sized projects could provide an enormous electricity boost — and do so for less cost to consumers and less environmental damage to the desert areas where most are located, say advocates of small-scale solar power.

Recent studies project that California could derive a substantial percentage of its energy needs from rooftop solar installations, whether on suburban homes or city roofs or atop big-box stores.

Janine Blaeloch, director of the nonprofit Western Lands Project, said smaller plants were never on the table when the federal solar policy was conceived early in President Barack Obama’s first term.

Utilities and solar developers wanted big plants, so that’s what’s sprouting in Western deserts, she said.

“There was a pivot point when they could have gone to the less-damaging alternative,” Blaeloch said, referring to both federal officials and environmental groups that have supported large-scale solar projects.

“There’s no question that it was a matter of choice, and it was the wrong choice.”

Built in far-flung locations where there is plenty of open land, large-scale plants require utilities to put up extensive transmission lines to connect to the grid.

Utilities charge ratepayers for every dollar spent building transmission lines, for which the state of California guarantees utilities an annual return of 11 percent for 40 years.

By comparison, small-scale plants can be built near population centers and provide power directly to consumers, reducing the demand for electricity from the grid.

Rooftop solar goes one step further.

It not only cuts demand from the grid, but also can allow homeowners and businesses to sell back excess power.

Falling start-up costs also have brought solar power within reach for many homeowners and small businesses.

In the last six years, the cost in Los Angeles to install a medium-sized solar system — between 50 kilowatts and 1 megawatt — has fallen by 55 percent, said J.R. DeShazo, an environmental economist at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Even though prices are coming down, Ray Brady, manager of the federal Bureau of Land Management’s renewable-energy program, said he has seen little interest in smaller-scale projects.

The agency has policies that provide incentives for developers to build smaller solar plants on federal land, including exempting projects from costly and time-consuming environmental reviews.

But Brady said that he could think of none in the works.

“We can only respond where there is an industry interest to do so,” he said, citing economies of scale that can make large power plants more cost-effective for developers.

The state has been more proactive in encouraging smaller projects.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s California Solar Initiative has set a target of 12,000 megawatts of energy derived from rooftop panels.

The program offers support for home builders who construct super-energy-efficient homes with photovoltaic panels.

The California Energy Commission is running another program, the $400 million New Solar Homes Partnership, with a goal of installing 400 megawatts by 2016.

Evan Gillespie, who heads up the Sierra Club’s renewable-energy programs in California, has worked to bring more uniformity to fees and permitting for rooftop solar, a statewide effort that he says has reduced the cost of a small residential system by $2,500.

“We want to make sure that in the next two to three years we are removing as much friction from the marketplace as possible,” he said.

“There’s a lot of work we need to do to get out of our own way.”

Even with the streamlining, experts estimate that 75 percent of California’s households cannot participate in the benefits of a residential rooftop system, primarily because they are renters. The same is true for most businesses, which often lease or rent space.

To remedy that, state Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, introduced a measure in the last legislative session to allow households and businesses to buy renewable energy from small-scale producers and receive credits on their utility bill.

“It is a practical approach in my view, and it is a finance-able approach,” Wolk said. “Frankly, small- and medium-scale is long overdue.”

Wolk’s bill was opposed by Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and eventually died. She reintroduced it last month.

“This isn’t anti-utility,” Wolk said. “It is opening up of the renewable market to those people who cannot participate but would like to.”

Gillespie said the state’s large utilities should eventually incorporate small-scale generation into their plans.

“The subsidies are almost gone,” Gillespie said. “The market continues to grow. Instead of opposing all of this, if I were a utility I would be trying to figure out how to partner with the solar companies.”

Back in Nipton, Freeman has already seen glimmers of that possibility.

The town is just a few miles from Oakland-based BrightSource Energy Inc.’s 3,500-acre power plant, visible across Interstate 15.

When the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is completed, it will be the largest solar-thermal power plant in the world, producing 370 megawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly 140,000 homes.

If things go according to plan, Nipton could eventually produce as much as 1 megawatt of power, which Freeman hopes to sell to Southern California Edison, which in turn provides electricity that helps run a small portion of the sprawling Ivanpah facility.

It’s possible that Nipton could provide some power to its giant solar-power neighbor.

“That would be something,” Freeman said.

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(Los Angeles Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.)